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Infant mortality, deprivation and proximity to polluting industrial facilities – A small-scale spatial analysis with census data (Lille Metropolitan Area, France) Volume 10, issue 3, Mai-Juin 2011

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Authors
EHESP (École des hautes études en santé publique), Rennes, Sorbonne Paris Cité Avenue du Pr Léon-Bernard 35043 Rennes cedex, France, Institut de recherche en santé environnement travail Rennes France, Inserm U954 Vandœuvre-les-Nancy France, Université de Nancy, Vandœuvre-les-Nancy France

The objective of the study was to investigate the association between infant mortality, deprivation and proximity to polluting industries in Lille between 2000 and 2009. The geographical unit used was the smallest French census block: the Iris. Information on infant deaths was collected from local authorities. These data include the family address, so that they can be assigned to their Iris of residence. Polluting industries were identified from the European database of polluting industries (EPER). A deprivation index was calculated across the Iris, from the Insee census data of 1999. Bayesian analysis, taking both the high variability in mortality rates in each Iris and the spatial autocorrelation into account, made it possible to determine the relation with deprivation and industries. The results show that the risk of infant mortality was multiplied by 1.53 (95% CI [1.33-1.76]) for a unit increase of deprivation, no significant association was observed with proximity to polluting industries. Our results confirmed the influence of socioeconomic status on infant mortality across the smallest scale area for which data were available in France. No association was observed with proximity to polluting industries, probably because the small scale of our units was not appropriate for the index of proximity to the polluting facilities that we used.